Leonora Unbound: Tonality as Allegory

Tonality has both a literal and a figurative or allegorical aspect. Tonal unity, a commonplace among much current music theory, is a superficial entity, a literal facade beneath which lies a sustained and discursive domain, where tonality is made and remade in a continual process of fracturing and reinterpretation. Like the frought persona of Beethoven's Leonora-cum-Fidelio, the tonality of the aria "Abscheulicher! ... Komm Hoffnung ..." defies analysis as a unified structural whole. Like the behaviour of the piano teacher in Bonnie Burnard's short story "Music Lessons," the conventional behaviour of tonality can be seen to crack and buckle in the aria, albeit only briefly, before it is smoothed over and fractious elements suppressed behind a facade of the calibre of a Fidelio.

L’ornementation de la musique française pour orgue de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle, d’après Titelouze, Mersenne et Denis

Compte tenu de l’état actuel de la recherche musicologique relative à l’ornementation de la musique française pour orgue de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle, cette étude apporte, par comparaison et synthèse de trois sources musicales et théoriques contemporaines de cette période, un certain nombre d’éclaircissements. Il faut notamment faire une distinction entre l’ornementation utilisée par les organistes du début et de la fin du XVIIe siècle en France : certains ornements seront abandonnés entre ces deux périodes, d’autres n’apparaîtront qu’à la fin du siècle. De plus, les différents ornements notés ou décrits dans ces trois sources que sont l’œuvre d’orgue de Titelouze, l’Harmonie universelle de Mersenne et le Traité de l’accord de l’espinette de Denis, sont suffisamment nombreux pour qu’il ait été jugé utile d’en établir une nomenclature qui représente un outil pratique pour l’interprète intéressé au répertoire pour orgue de cette période.

From Le sacre to Les noces: Primitivism and the Changing Face of Modernity

The function of the primitivist aesthetic in modern French culture shifted dramatically from the pre- to the post-war period. Whereas the primitivism of the Ballets russes's Le sacre du printemps was understood by its contemporaries to be radical, excessive, even prophetic and apocalyptic, the primitivism of Les noces was perceived to some extent as a manifestation of both the classicist "call to order" and the mechanistic aesthetic of the post-war period. Indeed, Les noces was one of many cultural products by means of which post-war modernists extolled the virtues of the machine age.

CUMS Remembered

On the occasion of his induction as a lifetime honorary member of the Canadian University Music Society, the Dean of Canadian composers, John Beckwith, offers a personal reflection on the triumphs and vicissitudes across more than thirty years of the Society. From its 1964 founding as a network of music deans and directors under the acronym CAUSM, through its metamorphosis into a learned society in the 1980s, to its present day hybrid form, CUMS is remembered—with affection and whimsy—as an agent in development of the Canadian music establishment.

Music and Text in Elisabeth Lutyens's Wittgenstein Motet

Although Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83) was a pioneer of British twentieth-century music, her work is relatively unknown in North America. This article begins with an introduction to her life and compositions, before going on to a detailed analysis of text-music relations in selected passages of her Motet, op. 27 (1953). The analysis forms the basis for a discussion of the concept of text as representation of music: Lutyens began to compose the music of the Motet first, and chose its text—excerpts from the Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921) by the Austrian-born English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)—because it seemed a fitting expression of the musical ideas that had already begun to develop.

CUMS Imagined

Encouraged by the engaging reflections of John Beckwith, the current President of the Canadian University Music Society, Tom Gordon, peers into the institutional crystal ball to imagine the challenges that lay ahead for the Society and the roles it might play in the future. Building on the organization's strengths of disciplined scholarship and the healthy diversity that characterizes our membership, a provocative role is envisaged for CUMS in communication around the many issues that unite the Canadian university music milieu.

So You Want to Be a Rock'n'Roll Scholar — Well You Need to Get an MBA

Stax Records was a record label based in Memphis, Tennessee from the late 1950s through December 1975, when it was forced into involuntary bankruptcy. "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Scholar — Well You Need to Get an MBA" uses Stax Records as a case study to problematize what has often been a tendency within popular music scholarship to attempt to understand the political economy of the record industry primarily via the mechanical application of Marxist theory on a macro level. In looking in detail at the relationship between CBS Records and Stax from 1972 through 1975, the author concludes that to fully understand the nature of the distribution agreement between the two companies, its ramifications, and the consequent subsequent actions of the various principals involved, all of which eventually led to Stax's bankruptcy, one needs to take into account on a micro level the different modi operandi of independent and major labels, differences in the retail world of black and white America, and individual agency. Finally, all of the above needs to be considered very specifically within a temporal framework. The final conclusions prove to be significantly different from what would have resulted from solely from a Marxist analysis on a macro level.

Music Trouble: Desire, Discourse, Education

"Music Trouble" is an experimental paper, a linear re-presentation of the multi-media performance (which included costume, poetry, photographs, and musical scores, in addition to the paper) designed for the Ottawa Border Crossings Conference. "Music Trouble" explores identity construction through music and music education, specifically in relation to issues of sexuality. Judith Butler's idea of "gender is drag" and Sue-Ellen Case's "butch-femme aesthetic" are employed in conjunction with feminist auto/biography to critique current theories and practices supporting music education.

God, Desire, and Musical Narrative in the Isorhythmic Motet

This article examines the relationship between late Medieval narrative structure in French literature and music (specifically the isorhythmic motet) and how that structure was shaped by deeply held beliefs within Medieval culture, including the idea that a person's identity and desires were directed by God. A detailed analysis of the motet De bon espoir/Puis que la douce rousee/Speravi by Guillaume de Machaut is made to support the argument.

White Noise: Composition, Colonization, and Colour

This paper examines the links between Western music, Western metaphysics, and Western imperialism. Taking Derrida's reading of "White Mythology" and "Violence and Metaphysics" as its point of departure, the paper explores the relationship between the theories and practices of musical composition formalized in Europe in the eighteenth and finalized in the nineteenth century, and the theories and practices of race, racial differentiation, and empire that coincide(d) with it.